Hi all,

I'm eagerly awaiting my Mandrake CD-Roms to arrive
In the meantime, can any of you guys give me a few leads on getting my (WinMe) machine prepared?

I'm currently running Windoze off my master drive (obviously). My slave has 4 partitions which are being used for various applictions, webdesign stuff, mp3s etc etc...

If I create a partition on my slave specifically to take my Mandrake installation, will the exisiting partitions on the slave be affected??

TIA

Solly

I'll assume you mean will your other existing partitions be affected? The answer is only if you get in a hurry and do something wrong.

Mandy will give you the option to overwrite the entire drive, which I believe is its default--you just have to change that. Each screen has information about the options on the left side. Read this all very carefully. Mandy will come with a installation guide--if you have never installed Linux, take some time to read this. These things are written for Windows users wanting to start using Linux and very easy to understand.

One item I would recommend paying attention to is what boot loader you are going to use--how will you set your computer up to dual boot? Mandy's default is LILO, which most folks on this forum prefer. It will want to set itself up in your Master Boot Record (MBR) of your disk and be the primary boot loader for both operating systems. If that is what you want, make sure it installs on the MBR of your primary disk (not the slave you are installing Mandy on). There are tons of posts on this forum--use the search button and look for "dual boot"--have a lot time to read!

Good luck

That is what I was getting at, yes.

Thanks very much for the hints deadbug... I'll get going on some reading up - starting here

Something else I forgot to mention - on my slave drive (where I'm wanting to install Mandrake) one of the existing partitions has windows apps installed - ie a 'Program Files' folder, but there are no system files on the drive. Will I run into any problems because of this, or will Mandrake ignore the whole partition if I tell it to anyway?

solfer,
In your case, the best way would be to use Partition Magic to resize and move all your windows partitions to the front of the slave drive, AFTER defragging all of them first. Then, do an "expert" install of Mandrake into the newly created "unallocated" space on the slave drive. You don't need to create a partition for Mandrake- let it use the unallocated space, and be sure to create a /home partition. This makes it much easier to upgrade or reinstall the distro, without messing with your docs and settings. Mandrakes partitioning tool is very easy to use in expert mode install. I usually do a boot, root, usu, home, and tmp partitions for Linux installs. If you need more details, post back.

wrc1944

Sorry- meant usr, not usu. And, to answer your other question, Mandrake will see and be able to mount your windows partitions, if they are FAT32, which with ME, they should be. Linux will not affect them, unless you FORMAT them after you create your partitions during the Mandrake install. Just be sure and go slow, and understand things before you do them. There will be a screen where you choose which partitions to format- just be sure the windows buttons are selected. Same applies when you reinstall Linux, or upgrade, or even change the distro- you just don't format the /home or windows partitions, and all is safe. BTW, I recommend reiser FS for your linux partitions- much better performance, and it's journalized.

wrc1944

Man!- I need to watch my typos better!!!

I actually mean "just be sure the windows buttons are NOT selected"! Very sorry- that could have led to disaster. As you know, formatting erases all data.

wrc1944

wrc,

Thanks for your help with this - my discs are here
I'm usually a bit gung-ho with stuff like this, but I can't afford to screw anything up, so I'll be taking my time with this one!!

I take it the boot, root, usr, home, and tmp partitions are created within the "unallocated" space whilst using the Madrake partitioning tool...

Thanks again
Solly

Correct. After you boot with the Mandrake installation cd1, and reach the file systems section, you will get the graphical interface partition tool where Linux detects all your hard disks, and partitions. It's pretty self-explanatory. Then you can set up however you like by clicking on the white space (unallocated), and then create button, then choose type (reiser, ext3, etc.), set the size you wish for the specific partition, and mount point (boot, root, swap,usr, home, tmp. Then after you have them as desired, click done, and you'll go to the format selection box, where you make sure your windows partitions are NOT selected for formatting. Then it will format, and you can go on to package selection. Once you do it once, it's really easy. The main thing is to really plan out your partitioning scheme the first time- like boot doesn't need more thab 100MB, root about 500-700MB, and usr is generally the largest (mine is 4GB on a 9GB hard drive), with a good sized home (2GB) also. Tmp can be various sizes, and swap is generally 300-500MB on a normal install with 256-512MB of ram. I find it's good to have a larger swap partition if you do a lot of compiling large programs. Everyone has different needs for the sizes of the partitions, so feel free to change what I have mentioned.

Hope this helped,
Robetrt C. (wrc1944)

Yes it has! Thanks again Robert for all this info.

I'll let you know how it all goes...

One last thing before I backup and take the plunge!

When I resize and move my windows partitions on my slave, will the free space on the slave which is left after I've resized ALL be used by Mandrake? My slave is 60gb, and I'm currently only using about 5gb for my windows stuff.

Not automatically- only if you choose to let it do so in the expert install mode, or if you choose the automatic install. Choose the expert- it's just as easy, far more flexible, and the choices will be self-evident. If you don't choose expert, Mandrake WILL use all the unallocated space- which you don't want it to do, as I understand what you have said.In expert mode, you will have the choices of how to size each partition you make, and it will leave as unallocated those GB's you don't use.

Since you have such a large slave drive, I would make pretty large partitions for /usr and /home (say 6-8GB for usr, 2-3GB for home), and install all the development packages, and documentation. That way, when you compile programs later on, you won't run into so many rpm dependency problems, as the development packages needed will be already there in a lot of cases. Even if you devote 20GB to your Mandrake install, you still have a bunch left. Not to say this will cover everything- you still need to go through Mandrake Control center, and rpmDrake and install a package from time to time, when you run into a problem trying to install a new package, or an update, etc.

Remember, as long as you don't format your windows partitions after booting from cd1 for the install, you will be OK. If you think you messed up, you can back out at anytime to any previous install point (click the point you want to go back to), or reboot and start the install completely over- no problem. And you must defrag the windows partitions BEFORE resizing or moving them with Partition Magick. If you don't have PM, you might have to leave the windows partitons as they are- which may be fine, if they are at the front of the disk, which they probably are. Am I correct in thinking you have all that unallocated space in one block? If so, you are OK to go. The mandrake partitioning tool will show you how stuff is presently laid out on the graphical screen.

Good Luck! Keep us updated.

wrc1944

One more thing I might mention. Linux will call your master disk hda, and the slave disk hdb, and you'll have little tabs in the partition tool page to select either one to work with.

wrc, your time and effort with this is really appreciated!

Sorry if this is really dumb of me, but how do I tell if my windows partitions are at the front of the disk? I do have PM, so all you mentioned shouldn't be a problem...

My slave is currently partitioned as:

Drive D: 10Gb - Various windows program file installations.
Drive E: 28Gb - Downloaded files, mp3s.
Drive F: 13Gb - My website dev stuff.

but as I mentioned before, I'm only using about 5gb in total over all three of those partitions.

OK- After a complete defrag of all slave drive partitions, open PM, and select your slave disk to work on. Then click on drive D:, and under operations, select resize, and shrink it to the desired size. This procedure should leave you some empty space between D: and E:

Then after reboot, you go back and work on E:, by choosing the operation "move," and drag it up beside D:, which will also move the empty space over. Then do the same with F:, leaving all the empty space at the end of the disk. All of this stuff will rewrite the disk tables automatically in PM, and also in the Drake tool.

By my calculations, on a 60GB drive, you have 51GB devoted to windows partitions, which ought to leave you 9GB empty space- more than enough to do a really full Mandrake installation. You might not even need to resize, if you will be happy with the 9GB- if not, resize and move the windows stuff to leave a little more free space for Linux. You might get away with just resizing F: by 4-5GB or so, and be done with it, then having 15GB for linux. It's all a personal choice as to your needs.

Open up PM and see what your slave drive partitions are detected as. If the empty space is shown on the far right, you are good to go. That would mean the partitions were created on the front of the disk. It will show up like that in the Mandrake tool, and your windows partitions will also appear as FAT32 partitions- and be read/write from linux- but linux will not be existing when you are booted to windows.

Also, I would choose lilo as the bootlaoder when you get to that part of the linux install- its a little more straightforward for novices at linux. And choose to start X at bootup, so the lilo bootloader screen appears when you start your machine, and you have the choices of systems to boot into. Go with KDE as the default desktop- much better than Gnome. Also, again, reiser is really the File System of choice these days. Also, if this is a home desktop system, and not a server, don't install any of the server pakages. You can install/uninstall any packages easily in Mandrake Control Center with rpmdrake later.

Hey, just posting back to say thanks to you (and DrakX of course!) installation was a breeze!!

Everything was up and running in about 30 minutes... The only problem I have is my modem's not being recognized, but once I've sorted that I'm off and running..

Thanks all (especially wrc1944) for the assistance here - I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into Mandrake now...